No matter which feed reader you use (Google, Bloglines, etc.), you will notice that some blogs have the entire post in the reader, some have a "teaser", and some list only the title.
You have control over how your blog is displayed in a feed reader, but not how other blogs are displayed. The blog owner chooses how to display her or his blog in feeds.
- In Typepad this option is under Weblogs > Configure > Feeds.
- In Blogger this option is under Settings > Site Feed > Allow Blog Feed (choose either full for the whole post, short for partial post, or none for title only).
- In WordPress this option is found in Options > Reading > Syndication Feeds.
There is always debate about how to set your blog to view in feeds. Many people like to read entire posts for all the blogs they subscribe to in one place. However, bloggers who host ads on their sites want you to come to their blog to read the post because they are being paid based on how many people visit their actual blog. If you read the post in your feed, you aren’t visiting the actual blog and they don’t get credit for you.
My personal preference is for the partial feed. I understand that for time constraints, it’s easier to read your favorite blogs in one place instead of clicking to the individual sites. However, feeds, to me, are just something that alert me that my favorite
bloggers have updated so I can go over and see what they have to say. I
think there’s a sense of community being built by visiting each other’s
blogs instead of relying on feeds.
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I understand that for bloggers who are trying to make money off their blog, it is in their best financial interest to get people to click over to their site, but I only have so much time. Because of this,
1)I have to limit the number of blogs I read
2)When the full feed is not available, I will often skip the post if it doesn’t seem immediately appealing
OR
3) I wait until there are several (sometimes a lot!) of posts waiting to be read. Then I click over and scroll through them.
The full feed is the only thing that allows me to keep up on a daily basis and that’s an unfortunate side effect of blogging for money- kind of like enduring the commercials during your favorite tv show.
Just wanted to say thank you for this very informative and helpful blog. I used your information as a starting point for my blog; and you continue to write about subjects that I have questions/am interested in.
Thanks so much!
@Sandyyou’re right that many bloggers use teaser posts to try to get more visitors to their site; however, FeedBurner (syndicator of close to 1 million feeds) has stated that they’ve seen no evidence that partial feeds alone actually increase feed clickthroughs.
I posted about this debate a while ago, and I come down firmly on the side of full feeds for many of the reasons Sandy listed. I read more than 150 blogs on a daily basis (for work), and I simply couldn’t click through on partial feeds (nor would I).
Thanks for this. I don’t really understand how feed readers work and don’t use one myself. Sometimes my stats show that someone came via bloglines, and I assume that means they clicked through anyway, even though I publish the full feed. I do have ads on my blogs, so maybe I should switch to a partial feed.